Just One Word
by Guardian-381
Summary: Alternate ending to the FAKE storyline: what if Ryo had given Dee a different answer during Second Chance?
1. Make Up Your Mind

Hi, everyone. This 'story' is actually a series of three short pieces which centre around an alternate ending to FAKE: the entire thing was actually started by me asking myself, "But what if Ryo had, in the end, rejected Dee?". Therefore, the divergence happens during the scene at the bridge in Second Chance (I've copied out the last canon lines before it to situate you that much better), and from there the entire story is Alternate Universe. It's also done in different POV's, which are listed next to the piece title, and though the titles are taken from songs which inspired the pieces, these are not songfics. Finally, the pieces are in sequential order. (inhales sharply, exhales) Okay, I think that's it. I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know what you think of this when you're done, and I apologize to all the Dee/Ryo fans who may be chasing me with pitchforks after reading this... My one-shot, Michelangelo Sky, might be more their speed. :P

Disclaimer (applicable to all chapters): I don't own FAKE. 'Just One Word' is the title of a song by a band called the Story, 'Absence of the Heart' and 'Make Up Your Mind' are the titles of songs by Deana Carter, and 'Too Little, Too Late' was taken from an Amanda Marshall song.

Make Up Your Mind-- Dee's POV

_**"...the other night. Are you sure that's what you really wanted? I... I mean, like, well...it was like, your first time and stuff, plus you had all those things on your mind, so I thought that, well, I thought that maybe it was one of those spontaneous, regrettable things and... I mean, regrettable for you, not for me, because it wasn't just a whim for me. I mean... I love you... I totally, seriously, completely love you and... God, I... I just don't want you to think that maybe I tried to take advantage of you in your moment of weakness and... sorry, man... just... just forget it." (Borrowed from FAKE, Volume 7- words property of Ms. Sanami Matoh)**_

He muttered something, and I turned my head just far enough to see him out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think I'd ever be able to look him in the face again, but I still had to know what his answer was. "Did you say something, Ryo?"

His voice was louder the second time, louder than it needed to be, and I realized that the reason I hadn't heard him the first time was because I hadn't wanted to. "I said 'maybe'."

"'Maybe' what?" I knew I was just buying time, even if I didn't understand why. I also knew that this would make everything more painful than it had to be; still, I couldn't just let go of the longing that I'd cursed for so long so easily. I couldn't leave any hope behind for it to catch on, or I'd never be rid of it.

At least, that's what I told myself then.

"Maybe it was a... spontaneous, regrettable thing." He turned back to the bridge, and I remembered how beautiful it had been a few moments ago, when I had been sharing it with him. Now, the sight was his alone, and I felt the presence of that wall as though it were made of stone rather than emotion.

"In what way?" I had never believed that I was too stubborn for my own good until that moment.

He paused. "Don't make me say it."

I growled and grabbed his arm before I even noticed my own movement: in another second, he was facing me. "In what way?" I repeated, almost as shocked as he seemed to be at my own coldness.

"I don't want to--"

"Tough," I hissed, and shook him once. "You don't get to just crush everything like that, and walk off without giving me a reason. Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"I don't love you, Dee. Not... not in the way you want me to." His voice was quiet, but no matter how hard I searched, there was no trace of uncertainty. I wondered how long he had known that he would never be able to return my feelings, and still let me make an ass of myself chasing him. "I'm sorry, but I--"

"Then why?" I was getting desperate: the shock was starting to wear off, and I didn't want to be near anyone when the rage kicked in. "Why come to me that night? Why tell me that you wanted me, that you wanted to--" I grit my teeth in a pathetic attempt at self-control. "Why leave me hanging for so long?"

"I wasn't sure exactly how I felt. I wasn't sure if I loved you or not. I didn't know what to do." I had heard enough coached testimony in my day to recognize the legacy of countless rehearsals in his words. "That night, I was so... I had just spoken with Leo. I didn't know what I was doing."

"Bullshit. You're telling me that, after all these months, you still couldn't make up your mind whether you loved me or not?" I tried to crush a sneer, but only softened it very slightly. "You weren't all that conflicted while I was sucking you off."

"It's not that easy." Righteous indignation leapt into his eyes, the same kind I knew was in mine, and I did sneer then, as cruelly as I could.

"Oh, what, now you're going to go on a victimhood trip? You're going to try to tell me I took advantage of you, that I was rushing you, that I was pushing too hard, that I--" I looked away from him, squeezed my eyes shut, and looked back. "I know what this is about."

"And what would that be, exactly?" I related his clipped tone to images of misplaced files and broken pencils, and would have laughed at the contrast if my sense of humour hadn't been totally shot by anger.

"It's about you being a goddamn coward. It's about you not ever wanting to let yourself feel anything." I leaned in closer to him. "We both know you felt something, that you feel something every time I kiss you. Maybe it's just lust, but I don't think so, because that's not who you are. You're--" I stopped, shook my head. "No. I'm not going to tell you. I'll let you figure it out for yourself, when everyone else in your life has gotten as sick as I am of being jerked around by poor, perfectly broken Ryo."

"And what would you know about anything beyond lust?" It wasn't just the words that hurt, although they stung like a bitch too. It was that Ryo still believed, even after all this time, that all I wanted was to get in his pants, for us to fuck around until I got bored and found someone new. _All this time, all this effort I've put into getting to know him better, and he hasn't even bothered to learn the first thing about me. _

Before I knew it, I was kissing him: he struggled slightly more than usual, and I shoved him into the guardrail hard enough to shock him into stillness for a few seconds. I tried to show him with every swipe of my tongue against his teeth, with every fevered brushing of my lips against his, just how far beyond lust I really was. On some level, I knew it wouldn't make any difference: after all, I had shown him the same thing in the same way at least fifty times already. The kiss was really more for me, so there'd be no doubt in my mind that I'd done everything I could to make him understand what that night, what he had meant to me before he had chosen to throw everything back in my face.

When it was over, and before he could recover enough to say or do anything, I threw his arm down and started to walk away. He called after me a few seconds later, and his voice held none of the certainty of his rehearsed rejection. "Dee. Dee, wait, I--"

"Save it," I said, and turned the nearest corner, listening for the sound of his footsteps behind me.

Even if I had waited all night, I don't think he would have followed me.


	2. Too Little, Too Late

Too Little, Too Late- Ryo's POV

My life stopped two weeks ago, and I'm the only one who knows it.

Of course, I still go to work. I still do my housecleaning, and cook for myself and Bikky. I still listen to Carol when she comes over, and give her advice when she needs it. But a huge part of my life, the part that made it more bearable than simple existence, is missing. It doesn't matter whether Dee took it with him when he walked out of my life, or whether I drowned it in the river alongside the possibility of us ever pursuing a romantic relationship; it's still gone, and without it, I've come to the horrifying realization that I'm just an empty, albeit animate, shell of a man.

I only found out that Dee had requested a change of partners halfway into our next shift, when Drake came into our office carrying a stack of cardboard boxes and trailing Rose behind him. Dee's desk had already been cleared of his few personal effects, but I hadn't noticed. "You'll be working together from now on," Rose had said, in that cocky, serpentine voice that he thinks is so seductive. I hated letting him believe he'd won, but I'd been too stunned to do anything but stare blankly at Drake as he unpacked his things. His movements were stilted, like he was an unwanted guest in a haunted house, and though I knew I should have made him feel more comfortable, done something to make his transition easier, I couldn't.

I didn't trust myself not to transfer my hatred for the situation onto him.

Since then, I haven't spoken to Dee at all. I've seen him a few times, but always from a distance, and never for very long. Once, he was with J.J.: though I can't prove it, I'm sure Rose threw them together to spite me for rejecting his advances. I hate the way we left things, knowing that he must be nursing a totally justifiable grudge, knowing just how much I must have hurt him. I want to talk to him: I feel that I should, but I have no idea what I would say. I can't apologize, because I can't think of anything I could have done differently, and I can't ask him for another chance, because I know I can't offer him what he wanted, what he needed from me.

Still, I need to talk to him, and that need is what's brought me here, to the point of lying on my bed with the first six digits of his long-memorized cell phone number punched into my cordless phone. As I dial the last number, I try to convince myself that everything will fall into place as soon as I hear his voice. I try to forget that he might recognize my number and choose not to answer: I try to forget how much I deserve to be shut out of his life completely.

All of that stops mattering when the line stops ringing and a familiar voice that isn't Dee's says, "Dee Laytner's phone. What's up?"

"May I speak with Dee, please?" Though I want to know who's answering his phone, I don't ask: _I can't allow any distraction, or I'll lose what little courage I've managed to scrape together._

"Dee's not available right now. May I ask who's..." The voice trails off, then says, "Wait a second. Is that you, Ryo?"

I blink twice before replying. "Yes. I'm sorry, do we know each other? I don't seem to be able to place your voice."

A chuckle. "The reception is really bad. I barely recognized you either. It's J.J."

_J.J. Why is he answering Dee's phone? _I look at my watch: it's 7:30. _Dee should be at work now... and J.J.'s his new partner. That explains why they're together, but not why he's answering Dee's personal cell. _"Oh. Hi, J.J. How have you been?"

"Pretty good. How about you? And don't say 'fine', because we'll both know you're lying."

I pause. "What do you mean?" I ask, and the question is not entirely an attempt to buy time for thought.

"Dee told me..." J.J. trails off and remains silent just long enough to come up with a better opening. "I know what happened between you guys. Even if Dee hadn't told me, I would have guessed, just like everyone else has." A silence. "I guess that's why you're calling?"

"I guess that's between Dee and I, isn't it?" I try to rein in the coldness of my tone, to remind myself that even J.J. has every right to look down on me for what I've done. "When's he going to be back?"

"I'm not sure. Even if I were, I don't think I'd tell you. He doesn't want to talk to you, Ryo. He wants to forget you exist, and I don't blame him."

I dig my free hand into the comforter. "He'll talk to me," I say, and it sounds more like I'm trying to convince myself of something implausible than stating anything resembling objective fact. "He's not that selfish."

Another chuckle: this one sounds sardonic, as though J.J. is mocking me. He probably is. "Maybe not as a rule, but I think he could make an exception for you. If anyone deserves it, you do."

I sigh. "Look, I admit I screwed up, okay? But will you at least give me credit for trying to make it right? For trying to fix whatever I can?"

"No. Because you can't fix this, and it's your fault it's broken in the first place. It's all your fault." I hear a rough shuffling of papers. "You can't stroke your ego at someone else's expense for that long and then expect to fix the consequences with a half-assed apology, or whatever else you called looking to offer him." J.J. sniffs. "It's all too little, too late, Ryo, and if you want to give Dee any chance at recovery, you're going to let him walk out of your life without trying to drag him back."

A click that I recognize too late as the line disconnecting is J.J.'s final, and perhaps strongest, message, and I place the phone on my nightstand with shocked calmness before I curl up with the nearest pillow and sink into the freshly washed, too-cool sheets.

It's going to be a long night.


	3. Absence of the Heart

Absence of the Heart- J.J.'s POV

After so much time spent wishing and hoping against all odds, I finally have exactly what I've always wanted. And it's empty, because he is, in every sense of the word.

When Dee first came to me, three days after we switched partners, I was happy. Ecstatic, even. Sure, he was a little scarred, maybe a little more broken. He cried a few times when he thought I wasn't around, or wouldn't notice. But, hey, you don't refuse a gift this big just because the ribbon's a little scuffed.

Our relationship progressed extremely fast, not that I minded at the time. Before I knew it, we were sleeping together, and I was practically living at his apartment. The situation didn't compare to my fantasies, of course: Dee wasn't as passionate as I'd imagined, or as talkative, or as outgoing, but it was still more than I had ever imagined I'd get from him. So, I told myself to be satisfied, and take what I had been given, and thank whoever I believed had put it into my hands.

This worked until things began to degenerate to a point beyond that accountable for by the wearing off of the relationship's novelty. The sex was the first thing to change: it became rougher, more animalistic, more detached on his part. Then, he stopped joking around: he always looked deathly serious, and spent his time drinking and chain-smoking in the living room while I emptied out the ashtray periodically, silently. I didn't call him on any of it, even when his kisses became dutiful, desire-less brushings of our lips. To voice my feelings on any of these subjects would have forced me to realize that, after a month or two, we were acting as though we'd been married twenty years, and I wasn't ready for that at all.

That hasn't changed: even now, I'm only facing it because I have no other choice.

At the time, however, I told myself that things would get better on their own, that this was a normal part of his recovery process that would resolve itself with a little time, gentle caring, and space. Of course, nothing gets better on its own, only worse, and that's what happened to Dee. He became actively abusive: though he never hit me, he'd shout and curse over the most unimportant things, like which brand of cigarettes I'd bought him, the disorder of our work files, or the noise if I accidentally dropped a book or a remote control. Still, I treated this as 'normal': I smiled, and apologized, and tried to continue transforming my life into 'our' life. Now, four months of verbal and psychological abuse later, I think I know the reason he acts as though he hates me.

He chose me looking for Ryo's replacement, and he hates me for being unable to live up to that ideal, which even Ryo himself couldn't meet.

When he asked me out that day, barely half a week after the incident with Ryo, I should have said 'no'. I should have reminded both of us that rebounds of this calibre aren't the best foundations for lasting, productive relationships. But I didn't. I let my feelings of satisfaction, of finally getting what I deserved, overcome my logic. I completely forgot that anything too good to be true almost certainly is.

I will continue paying for that until one of us dies.

Because, you see, it's far too late to even consider ending our relationship. Even if he could handle another rejection, even if destroying him like that wouldn't make me feel guilty, we've grown dependent on each other, though not to the same extent and not in the same way. No matter how dark our relationship, I don't want to go back to a life of nightclub sex, of T.V. dinners for one, of worrying whether I'll die alone or whether I'm good enough to merit anything more. If I have to be lonely, I'd rather do it with him: at least then I have a chance of convincing myself that I have something worth living for. At least then, I'll feel somewhat necessary.

However much I hate Ryo, I do have to admire him for choosing loneliness over the binding relationship that he too could surely have found. I guess it must be easier when you have a kid to keep you company, and stop you from thinking too much.

Dee will never love me. I know that now, even if I didn't then. He will never kiss me with anything but vague disgust; he will never let us have sex face to face, lest it shatter his fantasy of the warm body underneath his being Ryo's. And yet, he remains as trapped in this relationship as I am, because he's also scared of that loneliness, that silence, where words come too easily and are impossible to ignore.

And tomorrow, we'll all wake up older, in every sense of the word.


End file.
